The nine agencies — including the State Elections Enforcement Commission, the Freedom of Information Commission and the Office of State Ethics — were stripped of staff and resources in 2011 and bundled together into something called the Office of Governmental Accountability, headed by an executive administrator appointed by the governor.

The avowed purpose was to share back-office expenses and save money. The amount saved is debatable — it could be more if the governor axed the budget for the unnecessary executive administrator's office — and at any rate is likely not enough to justify the loss of independence by agencies that have the essential task of seeing that state officials and politicians play by the rules.

In addition to undermining the watchdogs' independence, the "reform" has chipped away at their effectiveness.

The latest evidence that this is an unworkable model came last month, when Executive Administrator Shelby J. Brown ordered a computer seized from the State Elections Enforcement Commission as part of a Brown-led investigation of a former employee accused of uploading commercial films to the computer.

The executive director of the elections commission should have conducted the investigation, not Ms. Brown. What if the computer had contained confidential files of an election commission investigation of a Malloy administration official or even of the governor himself?

"Quite frankly, I work for the governor," Ms. Brown told the Connecticut Mirror last month, after asking the legislature for more power. But her job performance is evaluated by a panel called the Government Accountability Commission, which is composed of a representative of each of the watchdogs.

If Ms. Brown does work for the governor, then putting the governor's office in charge of state watchdog agencies creates obvious conflicts of interest. For example, the State Elections Enforcement Commission is now investigating whether the state Democratic Party spent money illegally on Mr. Malloy's re-election campaign.

Ms. Brown, like her ineffectual predecessor David Guay, doesn't communicate effectively with the watchdog agencies; she did not tell them she was going to testify before a legislative committee on a matter of importance to them, for example. Nor did she give the elections commission adequate notice that she was going to cart off the computer.

In ways large and small, the so-called reform isn't working. It takes longer for delivery of supplies than it did before, officials complain. It takes longer for some agencies to process complaints from the public.

It's time to blow up this structure and return to the watchdog agencies their independence.